I guess so if you're list expanded to top 20-30 young defensemen, then I'd agree.

Quote:

Del Zotto is shaky defensively and can't hit twine for jack ****. Evident who is better.

Del Zotto is shaky defensively, no denying that. But let's not act like Johnson is a mistake free player out there. Like DZ, they both play against moderate competition (non-shutdown), however DZ dominates in his minutes production wise vs. Johnson.

Can't hit for twine? I'm not sure if you're referencing to his shooting skills or physicality, but he is very good in both of those aspects. Truly one of the most underrated players in today's game.

Girardi. EJ has got to be the most overrated #1 pick since Stefan. I'm sick and tired of hearing about his ''potential''. Phaneuf had that same label for the longest time and eventually he has settled into the role he has now. I doubt people think he can be a consistent 50pts player. So why is EJ any different? Sure he had a decent year last year. But eventually potential isn't enough and a player has to perform. EJ may have greater potential, but that means squat if he doesn't realize it.

I think the point people miss with Johnson is that he is realizing his potential, it is just not a consistent basis. It is not that Johnson is a defenceman who everyone is waiting for him to learn how to make a good first pass, or hope he develops some hard slap shot he has never shown before. He does everything people would want to see from him to see that he is actually "realizing his potential." He just needs to do it night in night out now. And seriously, if you took Shane O'Brien off his left side and put Del Zotto, Giradi, McDonagh, or Staal beside him, I'm sure it would be a little easier for him to find some consistency having another good player instead of someone who has played for 5 teams already and believes he has the capabilities of an Erik Karlsson.

Just wait for the lockout to end. A lot of this EJ bust talk is going to go away.

I think the point people miss with Johnson is that he is realizing his potential, it is just not a consistent basis. It is not that Johnson is a defenceman who everyone is waiting for him to learn how to make a good first pass, or hope he develops some hard slap shot he has never shown before. He does everything people would want to see from him to see that he is actually "realizing his potential." He just needs to do it night in night out now. And seriously, if you took Shane O'Brien off his left side and put Del Zotto, Giradi, McDonagh, or Staal beside him, I'm sure it would be a little easier for him to find some consistency having another good player instead of someone who has played for 5 teams already and believes he has the capabilities of an Erik Karlsson.

Just wait for the lockout to end. A lot of this EJ bust talk is going to go away.

At some point, we need to start seeing some of EJ's 'untapped' potential. It's been 5 years since he entered the league.

Before an Avs fan references to Chris Pronger, I will tell you that Pronger was a 27 minute 2-way phenom by his 4th year in the league. He then went on to become a 27-30 minute generational defenseman. I don't see the correlation between the two.

I think the point people miss with Johnson is that he is realizing his potential, it is just not a consistent basis. It is not that Johnson is a defenceman who everyone is waiting for him to learn how to make a good first pass, or hope he develops some hard slap shot he has never shown before. He does everything people would want to see from him to see that he is actually "realizing his potential." He just needs to do it night in night out now. And seriously, if you took Shane O'Brien off his left side and put Del Zotto, Giradi, McDonagh, or Staal beside him, I'm sure it would be a little easier for him to find some consistency having another good player instead of someone who has played for 5 teams already and believes he has the capabilities of an Erik Karlsson.

Just wait for the lockout to end. A lot of this EJ bust talk is going to go away.

I would expect a 5 year vet to show consistency. I agree that he is better than MDZ though for the people having that debate.

So by 2nd pairing there would be at least 60 Dmen better than him in the NHL right now?

That's what you are implying here and there are some really bad teams out there and not all of them have 2 guys better than EJ.

I think there is zero question that there are 60 defenseman currently better than Johnson, in fact it's probably closer to 100. On his own team he was 3rd in EV strength time on ice. Johnson's 24 being a 2nd pairing guy at the moment is just fine. Tell me what has he done to be a top 60 defenseman? He's not used as a shutdown guy, he doesn't score a ton, and he's not even on his own teams top EV strength pairing. This is a player who has not reached his potential and is being valued as if he has.

EJ is far and away the better player here if you incorporate defense into this. EJ is one of the best young two-way defensemen in the league. Del Zotto is shaky defensively and can't hit twine for jack ****. Evident who is better.

Johnson started in his own zone nearly 60% of the time compared to Del Zotto who was much closer to 50%. Del Zotto was outshot while Johnson was outshooting however if the zonestart advantage wasn't enough to account for it the lesser competition Johnson faced should. Del Zotto however was about 1 million times more effective on the PP.

I should say that early on Johnson faced tough competiton. They stopped giving him that role when (as Muffin pointed out to me by virtue of an article he linked) Johnson was on for 40% of his teams GA early on. Here's the quote:

Quote:

However, as the team began to struggle, so did Johnson. He was on the ice for 26 of the 65 goals that were scored against Colorado during the first 21 games of the season (or 40 percent).

In fact i think the article i mentioned is a rather decent source for an unobjective viewpoint. I would argue that he tries to make the article very positive, but he certainly does not ignore the truth. After Muffin showed me this article i was pretty happy with how well it confirms my initial opinion on this player. He's still got a ways to go, and is still prone to some very poor stretches of play. However i will say at this point in time Ladi Smid didn't look like he would ever been a shutdown defenseman, so it can happen quick. Let's stop putting this player on a pedastal and wait for him to actually do what he's capable of for a full season instead of just assuming he does because he is capable of it.

I think the point people miss with Johnson is that he is realizing his potential, it is just not a consistent basis. It is not that Johnson is a defenceman who everyone is waiting for him to learn how to make a good first pass, or hope he develops some hard slap shot he has never shown before. He does everything people would want to see from him to see that he is actually "realizing his potential." He just needs to do it night in night out now. And seriously, if you took Shane O'Brien off his left side and put Del Zotto, Giradi, McDonagh, or Staal beside him, I'm sure it would be a little easier for him to find some consistency having another good player instead of someone who has played for 5 teams already and believes he has the capabilities of an Erik Karlsson.

Just wait for the lockout to end. A lot of this EJ bust talk is going to go away.

By this logic Sam Gagner is a 1st line center. Listen it's consitency that's valued above all else in the pro's, a coach has got to know what he is getting. Many a young player have great games and stretches and level off it's what growing up is all about. However we typically don't value these guys based only on their best stretches of play. We have the same problem with Gagner, he has great weeks of play and then is very average for a while. I would argue the peaks aren't as high (minus the 8 point night) and the valley's not as low, but again it's consistency that often holds these young guys back. Johnson should develop consistency as he get's older but not being consistent now is a very big detriment to how his coach can use him and how good he really is. Even last year Johnson had some very poor stretches of play, as i mentioned above.

Who the hell can actually think Del Zotto is even close to Johnson's level.
Girardi is barely edging it out in this poll and I would absolutely love for someone to post a poll with MDZ vs. EJ because I doubt you could fit that many biased rangers fans into one poll without having EJ absolutely destroy that poll because of how overwhelmingly better he is.

Who the hell can actually think Del Zotto is even close to Johnson's level.
Girardi is barely edging it out in this poll and I would absolutely love for someone to post a poll with MDZ vs. EJ because I doubt you could fit that many biased rangers fans into one poll without having EJ absolutely destroy that poll because of how overwhelmingly better he is.

Del Zotto averaged more minutes, faced tougher competition, got 16 more pts, and led his team to a division title. Even if we bring facts into this, it will ultimately be ignored because HF's hive mentality will always have the stance that MDZ sucks.

I love all the people saying this is not even close...while the poll results say something very different. But of course all the people saying its not close must be right, and the only reason its close is because everyone undervalues Ranger players

Del Zotto averaged more minutes, faced tougher competition, got 16 more pts, and led his team to a division title. Even if we bring facts into this, it will ultimately be ignored because HF's hive mentality will always have the stance that MDZ sucks.

He did not face tougher competition. He did not lead his team. He played on a much better team and more offensive team and didn't need to focus on defense. Please bring some facts into this because I would love to hear it other than this one season where he barely averaged more minutes than Johnson.

He did not face tougher competition. He did not lead his team. He played on a much better team and more offensive team and didn't need to focus on defense. Please bring some facts into this because I would love to hear it other than this one season where he barely averaged more minutes than Johnson.

Fact:

DZ: 3rd in Rangers QUALCOMP
EJ: 4th in Avs QUALCOMP

Del Zotto faced tougher ES competition. You're wrong.

Fact: DZ (22:26) averaged more minutes than Erik Johnson (20:50).

The difference in SH TOI/PG is pretty close between the two.

Erik Johnson (1:34 SH TOI/PG) vs. Michael Del Zotto (1:23 SH TOI/PG)

Remember, Del Zotto is doing this on a contending team, fighting with 3 other top tier shutdown d-men for PK time. The Rangers were ranked 5th in PK% last year. If he was on a weak/average defensive team, he'd log 25+ minutes a night. He is a 2-way player in every essence of the term.

Del Zotto averaged more minutes, faced tougher competition, got 16 more pts, and led his team to a division title. Even if we bring facts into this, it will ultimately be ignored because HF's hive mentality will always have the stance that MDZ sucks.

Something about this statement sounds amazingly familiar to a certain Avs player being discussed in this thread.

I know... it's Stastny!

This thread is an embarrassment, not only does it show how hockey deprived people are because right now we could be discussing how good these players actually are rather than were almost 8 months ago... but Eskimo is once again trying to but his pseudo-stats into this thread.

Guys, EJ played half the season injured. His numbers were 24+ minutes per night before that. EJ was used as the primary offensive defender for our team, letting our numerous defensive minded guys eat up the defensive time (SH, defensive zone starts, etc) just like Sacco did with McClement on the PK over O'Reilly. The Avs were shafted all season long in terms of PPs, how on earth can EJ be expected to put up better PP numbers when he doesn't get to get on the PP? Our entire team's scoring was down, our top scorer had 55 points. Tell me, how many defenders in the league are going to break 30 points on a team that can't have anyone over 55 points?

I could go on and on, but people will pretend they know better because they are the greatest hockey minds ever and don't even need to watch the players to know how good they are. It's not even remotely possible EJ is better than someone on MY team because EJ is a #1 overall bust joke of a hockey player that wouldn't even make 2nd pairing on a contender!

It's all the pride and the hate. In theory, everyone is prideful of those who have "potential" for potential's sake. When it comes down to reality, you have to just take a look at the tangibles. I'm not saying it's necessarily an easy choice to go with Danny G but all this potential crap is taking a high ground that doesn't exist.

Much like gambling, everyone likes the high risk and high rewards choice and favor the player with "potential" which I think should be specified further because there are those who have potential and is actualizing it and improving dynamically and then there are those who are not doing as much as they could be with their "potential". Having that said, EJ can be a more dynamic player and can have just as good defensive skills but until that potential (which has been in the works for over 5 years) actually come to form, it's just a wager on the ideal.